Neti Pots: Nice to your Nostrils

My boyfriend Charlie and I live two blocks from the pacific ocean.  This means we're in the water a lot, swimming, boogie boarding, surfing, etc.  

I hear a lot of horror stories from friends and neighbors about the water.  Since there are so many people around, the water is somewhat polluted, and urban legends about flesh-eating bacterias and other nastiness abound.  

I think a lot of those stories are a little ridiculous, but it is true that, with the pound of the surf and the pressure of the wave against my body, I definitely take in a lot of salt water, especially through my nose.

Charlie has this problem ten-fold, because he's a surfer.  He was even noticing a nasal twang coming into his voice, a sign of build-up somewhere in the nasal passages.  What should we do?

A coworker of his recommended a neti pot.  We happened to already have one around, since Charlie was encouraged to buy one when he lived in Arizona, to combat all the allergens from the prescribed burns in the woods near his town.

So we broke it out today.  It feels great.

A neti pot is a ceramic pot with a spout, like a small teapot.  To use it, you fill it with clean warm water and dissolve some sea salt in it.  Then you tilt your head to a prescribed angle and let the water run into one nostril and out the other, switching sides until all the water in the pot has been used.

It's kind of an unpleasant sensation, until you get used to it.  It just feels weird, and a little wrong.  

The neti pot rinses out bacteria's, allergens, and blockages.  After using the neti today, my nose honesty feels clearer than it has since the fall allergy season began, which I'm ecstatic about.  

I didn't know anything about the neti pot, other than what I'd heard from friends.  So I looked it up.

Apparently nasal irrigation (what you do with a neti pot) is "the personal hygiene practice in which the nasal cavity is washed to flush out excess mucus and debris while moistening the mucus membranes of the nose and sinuses."

This nasal irrigation has been practiced in India for centuries as one of the disciplines of yoga. I was also heartened to discover that testing has shown that using the neti is safe and beneficial, with no significant side effects.

Apparently there are loads of benefits too, including allergy relief, improved sense of taste and smell, and deeper breathing.

**If you are into trying a neti pot, you can look for one in your local health store, or check out www.jalanetipot.com for more information.  You could also check this out - apparently Oprah is into the neti pot too!  ://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/03/fashion/03skin.html

NOTE: If you watch the accompanying youtube video, the beginning is good guidance.  However, as soon as the guy starts putting coffee in the neti pot, the instructional part ends and the funniness begins.  I do NOT endorse pouring coffee, whiskey, or any substance other than salt water into the nose.  I repeat, do not pour coffee in your nose.  Gross.

Civic Action for Health

I've been feeling adrift in this media maelstrom, buried beneath the facts and fictions of the two campaigns.  It's making me anxious, man!  At times I feel hopeful and excited about the future.  At other times, I feel fretful and anxious about the future.

Going on a three day news fast was necessarily cleansing.  I needed a break from all the vitriol and meanness that both parties are spewing on each other.  I feel healthier now, coming back to the news with clear eyes and an open heart.

However this election goes, I feel like it has been healthy for our country.  The passion that people feel for their parties and their issues gets the blood moving, and lends a purpose to our actions.  

I feel an electricity in the air on this election day.  More people are voting today than I have ever seen, including my boyfriend, and Independent who has never voted before.  People have been driven to act with our communities and country in mind.  

This kind of civic action has to be healthy, whatever the results turn out to be.  We are stronger as a community, and as I go out to vote I move with and for my community.  (Wo)Man is no island, and that's never so obvious as now.

That is soo California

For five months this past year, I lived in the official rainiest city in North America – Ketchikan, Alaska.

I do not tell a lie.  You know how everyone talks about how rainy Seattle is?  Seattle gets about 70 inches of rain a year.  Ketchikan gets 120.  That’s ten feet.  And that would be a relatively dry year.

I led kayaking trips up there, which was wonderful but absurdly wet.  Our house and belongings all took on a lingering mildew smell.  Not to mention my boots, which now have a permanent wet-sock funk to them.

As the kayaking season wrapped up, my boyfriend Charlie and I decided that we needed to do something different, at least until our bath towels dried.  So we took a ferry to Bellingham, Washington, and began the drive.

We visited friends on the way down, camped in National Parks, and searched for Glory Land.  We stopped through some truly amazing places (highlights: Ashland, OR, Humboldt, Napa Valley, and Big Sur, CA), but no one town seemed just right.  We were seeking a rare combination of sunshine, community, beach, and a cost of living that was at least shy of ridiculous.

And we found it, in Ocean Beach, a neighborhood in San Diego.

We had to drive almost to Mexico to find this gem, but find it we did.  And oh, it is so ideal!  We live in a bungalow two blocks from the beach, and pay the same rent that we paid in Arizona (too damn hot, and what’s the use of heat without a beach?) and in Vermont (too damn cold, but oh-so-lovable). 

Since we moved to San Diego, I’ve noticed some differences in my body.  I no longer feel as heavy and weighed down as I did when I lived in colder climes, or as lethargic.  I am eating healthier and lighter, also eating less. 

In cold and crappy weather, my body goes into hibernation mode – time to do a lot of inside activities, bake bread and cookies, and eat foods that make me feel warm and full.

These are things I love to do – bake a batch of yummy-smelling holiday things, then read in front of a toasty fire, cup of cocoa by my side.

BUT, I only love to do them for a short period of time.  Then I get tired of it – I want to sleep in more, I don’t feel like scraping the car, and it’s no longer fun to be clomping around town in boots and several pounds of cold weather clothing.

Here in my new home, I can ride my bicycle to the beach in my shorts, after eating a crisp and refreshing salad or a piece of fresh fruit.  I want to eat these things here - it seems natural.  My body feels healthier and more awake here.  My lifestyle choices are better here.  I run more, swim more, and do more yoga.  The weather is so great that I want to be outside all the time.

I read this and think with shock how California it all sounds.  I hear the stereotype of wheat-grass shooting, organic-eating, slick and tanned California people in my words.  A voice whispers in my ear, “it’s true, it’s all true!”

There is a sex and the city episode where all the women go to California for some reason (I don’t remember now).  Miranda runs into an old friend from New York and they get into a conversation.  She noticed how much he’s changed, how he’s no longer cynical and sarcastic, how he’s health-conscious now.  She makes fun of him for it, but he responds with seriousness. 

He tells her that he likes California attitude – the earnestness, the healthiness, and the happiness.

I think about that episode sometimes out here, and how surprisingly true the stereotype is.  It’s easy to eat healthily here.  People here run and hike and swim and surf, so it’s not hard to stay motivated to be active.  And it’s a difficult lifestyle and attitude to be cynical about, because it’s all so nice.

It’s funny, I had never thought that I could be a “California girl”.  No way.  Way too “Sweet Valley High” for me.  But now I’m sucked in, and I don’t know if there’s an escape.  The crazy part is, I don’t think I want one.

Therapy: From Breakdown to Breakthrough

For a long time I thought therapy was lame.

In my world-view at the time, people who sought therapy were selfish and self-absorbed, wanting only to talk about themselves and their problems all day long.  They were so obnoxious that they had to pay people to lisetn to them.

Then I had a break-through.  Or, to be truly open and honest with you, I had a breakdown. 

My psyche was letting me down.  I was not in control of my own thoughts, and my brain was sabotaging my relationship with a barrage of intense low self-esteem messages, planted at an early age by an abusive upbringing.  Anxiety about obtaining a perfect public image caused me to fall apart.  I had no idea how to be myself. 

My boyfriend was incredibly supportive and loving throughout.  My breakdown caused me to finally be honest about what was happening in my head, and in the end probably saved our relationship. 

The real catalyst, however, was something my friend Kate said.  Kate was one of my roommates at the time, and she was studying to be a therapist while herself attending therapy sessions once a week.  

I asked Kate about therapy one day, feeling a little sheepish and silly asking about something that I’d always been so negative about.

“Therapy is just good health maintenance,” she said, “It’s like going for your physical or something, everyone should do it.”

I was already leaning toward some sort of change in my life, but this statement helped me to really make that change.  Kate, someone I truly loved and respected, someone who wasn’t a weirdo or self-absorbed, was advocating therapy. She was normalizing therapy for me. 

Then therapy seemed accessible, and healthy, and good.  With some guidance, I found a great therapist.  I have been having sessions once a week for about nine months now. 

It’s a hard thing to do, if you really delve into it.  So I support anyone’s efforts to pursue therapy, and applaud anyone who is currently doing self-work.  It is, I think, the most important work to do.  We can’t really love or care for others selflessly until we can love and care for ourselves.  Not to get all Mister Rogers on you, but it really is true.  

I learned that therapy is not a selfish and self-absorbed thing to seek out, at least not if you do it for the right reasons.  Now I see how hard it is, and how much it helps and stengthens my relationships with other people, and enables me to actually be less focused on myself, because I feel ok about myself.  Glory be!

Sometimes it’s scary, and a lot of the times it hurts.  I have to feel feelings that I used to push away, and remember memories that I used to deny.  This part really sucks.  

However, I’m learning to love and value myself, like I didn’t before.  I am also so much more genuinely myself, since I have become more comfortable with being honest about my flaws and my pains.

As my therapist says, on the other side of the pain of reawakening is bliss.

(One side affect of therapy, by the way, is using the phrase, “as my therapist says…” quite a lot.)

***If you’re interested in pursuing therapy, but feel sort of weird about it, check out “The Road Less Traveled”, or anything by the author SARK.  They may motivate you to find your own therapist, or at least do some thinking.*** 

Prescription Blues

This week I've been suffering.  Weak, cranky, and exasperated with my body, I make every effort to move my fingers and type this article.  

I have a urinary tract infection.

I've only ever had a UTI (as they are commonly known) once before.  At that time, I was on a sailing trip with my then boyfriend, enjoying all the pleasures that sleeping alone on a big sailboat with your college boyfriend affords.  By the time I'd gotten home, the problem had progressed to a full-blown kidney infection.  I ended up being hospitalized.  I waited for death while simultaneously bitching at the nurses that "forced" me to do things like wake up and take my medicine.

Needless to say, I survived to tell the tale.  With that experience under my belt, however, I am now quite cautious.  Earlier this week, when I was feeling a little ache when I peed, I was suspicious.  Later the same night, I had to pee so often that I had a hard time falling asleep - every time I felt this huge urge to urinate, only a tiny trickle would come out.  Definitely a UTI.

So I moved heaven and earth to get an appointment the next day at one of the busy San Diego Planned Parenthood offices. Like a lot of recently graduated Americans, I do not have health insurance, so Planned Parenthood generally is my go-to for all things medical - they are amazing.

I received a prescription for an antibiotic and went on my merry way.  But this was not the end of my troubles.  No ma'am.

Since I've been taking the antibiotic, I've been nauseous and fatigued, unable to keep any quantity of food down, and pretty irritable and head-achey besides.  Unable to fathom why this sudden plague attacked me, I looked to the antibiotic, researching its contents on the internet.

The drug that I was given was sulfamethoxazole and trimethoprim, mixed.  Why drug designers give their products such wacked-out, tongue-tripping names, I'll never know.

I sat down and googled both those names.  The internet really is amazing, especially if you are sick or suffering - if you know how to pick the legit sites out from all the shady sites, you can learn a lot.  I read a NY Times article the other day that extolled the virtues of internet sites like webmd.  These are sites that patients are now using more often as second opinions, or even first opinions for those of us without insurance, who are hoping that the strange earache we just got is something that will go away on its own.

I digress.  When I typed in sulfamethoxazole (what a mouthful!), I read this:

"Sufamethoxazole may cause dizziness, headache, lethargy, diarrhea, anorexia, nausea, vomiting, and rash." (medicinenet.com)

Well great.  

The results for trimethoprim were similar. When I looked this drug up, I read this:

"The most common side effects associated with trimethoprim are gastrointestinal.  They include loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, abnormal taste, and swelling of the tongue." (medicinenet.com)

Are we seeing a pattern here?  The side effects so closely matched up with my own symptoms that I felt positive I had found the culprit.  Here is where I had to make some decisions.

From my vantage place on the couch, poised to make a dash to the bathroom if I had to vomit or pee, I lay and looked at the pill bottle in my hand.  What to do?

Modern medicine has done so much for us - I don't get sick often, but when I do, I crash, and there is always some medicine to pick me back up and piece me together again.  Thank god.  What if it was still the dark ages, and once you were sick you were quarantined and had to wait for death?  I would have died from that kideny infection, most likely, without the nurses waking me up and coaxing pills down my throat.

But medicines have their flip sides too.  Most medications we use are not that old, not always tried and true, and some can have disastrous side effects.  We are so very far from true understanding of our bodies, and how different each persons body is.  I'm sure there are a lot of people that can consume sulfa-whatever without a problem, but I am not one of them.

As much as I hated the nausea and headaches that were besieging my body, I also did not want my UTI to spread to my kidneys or bladder.  And I only had two more pills to take.  So I made the executive decision to take the pills, and suffer the consequences.  And oh, I did, losing my lunch and dinner while at work at my restaurant that night, going home miserable and depressed.

But today is a new day, and I have faith that I will be on the up and up as soon as I pass these pills.  And knowing what is causing these symptoms makes me feel oh, so much more confident in my hopes of feeling better.

The moral of the story is that the internet, with all its mighty powers of content, can really help you when you're sick.  I am not suggesting you use the internet as a surrogate doctor for serious problems - unless you have a much cooler computer than mine, it won't perform surgery on you.  But I do suggest that, next time you feel crappy, or get prescribed a medication you've never heard of, take the time to look it up.  You can find out what is actually in those pills you usually take without question (or at least, I do) and learn how the body works.  You don't even have to change out of your pajamas.

Sites to check out: medicinenet.com, webmd.com, medhelp.org, healthline.com.  There are so many more - find one that you like and trust, even ask your doctor for a recommendation!

Added note 10/17/08:  

Today I read a Judith Warner article from NYTimes.  She wrote about her own adverse reaction to a medicine prescribed to her for migraines, which ended up affecting her cognitive reasoning.  She writes, and I quote, "According to Sidney Wolfe, the director of the health research group at the non-profit Public Citizen, adverse drug reactions kill about 100,000 people a year and land 1.5 million in the hospital."

Holy Shit.  This makes my advice about researching your meds even more pertinent.  Take care of yourselves!

Criticism

A critic can be wonderful for the creative process.  I've received criticisms that infuriated me at the time, then made me think and change something in my work for the better.  I've also received comments that made me feel invigorated because they challenged me.

Political criticisms can go off the deep end, though.  Politics can be a very visceral thing.  For Halloween this year I dressed as Sara Palin.  It was funny, because I sort of look like her, and I have the accent down.  But a lot of people were pretty nasty about it, as though I really was Ms. Palin.  There is absolutely no reason to hate someone you've never met, and I have never met Palin, so I refuse to feel hatred toward her.  The people I saw on Halloween apparently felt differently.

That said, political blogging can receive the same emotional reactions.  I've written a few pieces about politics and health on this page.  I'm interested in politics, and I like writing about them.  I also think they can be fun and funny, and I enjoyed writing "Barack proves that white men can't jump", which was about the health and attractiveness of our past presidents, strictly because it was fun.

One person in particular, someone named "joe", did not take this in good fun.  Joe made one comment, "you're a f***ing idiot", which I deleted as I felt it was in poor taste, and honestly, made me feel pretty sad.  I didn't want that sort of negativity on this page.

This sort of criticism is not constructive nor provoking.  It is just hurtful,and designed only to hurt.  This person doesn't know me, my college transcript, or my SAT scores, and has no basis to make judgement on my intelligence, other than an article praising Obama as "healthy, hip and hot" (admittedly, this is more people magazine than Rilke, but who really cares?), and a comment I made poking fun at George W. Bush. 

Is this the consequence of politics, to develop hatred and act cruelly toward others with no personal basis, purely on a difference of opinion?  This is a sad state to find ourselves in.  We've taken the labels we've used to define ourselves, and turned them around to use as weapons against another.  Republicans - I am not a Bush fan, but that does not affect how I feel about you as people.  And, for the record, I like McCain.  As a senator, he was honest and smart, and he's a real hero.  

I will probably continue to write about politics on occasion, and this can serve as a note to all with hatred in their mouths and blindness in their eyes.  If you don't like it, don't read it.  No one's forcing you, so save the vitriol for your own writings, and keep it off of my page.  

*Constructive comments and argument are still welcome.

Help! The Election Is Holding Me Captive!

Lately, it’s been difficult for me to think about my health or well-being.  Or the health and well-being of others.  Or, really, anything at all.  The presidential elections have taken over my life.

When I should be sitting at my desk and working away like a good college graduate, I am instead slack-jawed and mesmerized by the New York Times caucus blog.  While I try to read and respond to emails, I am constantly clicking on the next internet tab over, be it the Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, or YouTube (otherwise known as The Ultimate Political Time-Wasting Tool).

It’s bad.  It’s really bad.  I know, I should get help, but I don’t have time to seek help AND watch 10,000 clips of Sara Palin saying crazy things.  I have goals here, people!

So I apologize if my posting times have been a little lackluster lately.  In an attempt to step my contributions up a notch, and to make time to do my laundry, I have decided to abdicate from my post as presidential election watchdog for three whole days – a lifetime, really, when November 4 is right around the corner.

But don’t worry Obama, if you can hear me, you’re still my homeboy.

Excuse Me, I Have Allergies

"Aaaaa-choo!" my nose announced, one beautiful blue October day.

The woman next to me gave me a look as a snuffled in order to keep snot from cascading down my face.  She edged away a little bit, in an automatic "keep away from the sick girl" manuever.

"Excuse me," I apologized, "I have allergies."

It is a little embarassing sometimes, being burdened with the sniffles each fall.  It certainly isn't sexy, blowing my nose on cocktail napkins.  And sneezing on people won't make you an friends.  

There is also the fact that, for a week or two before Halloween, I cannot breathe out of my nose.  I am aesthetically opposed to mouth-breathing - it just looks so sloppy - but I obviously have to breathe somehow.  So I become a mouth breather, and suffer the consequences of self-judgement.

I don't know how many people in the world are plagued with seasonal allergies, but I know that I do run into quite a few snifflers among my friends and family.  Allergies are so unfair.  You cannot control whether you get them, there's little you can do to stop their effects, and they make you feel icky and sick but you can't take time off work for them.  Where's the justice?

And where do these allergies come from anyway?  Why do I get a runny nose during the fall - shouldn't my nose be used to it by now?  I've experienced over two decades worth of falls, and still no improvement.  It's like, every October my nose sniffs the fresh crisp air and says "what is this?  I'm freakin' out man!"  Then procedes to produce unholy amounts of mucus.

I did a bit of research, and discovered that an allergy is a hypersensitivity of the immune system.  It's like my immune system is some emotional prima donna, demanding that all those tiny clusters of pollen apologize for being so rude.

Allergies got their name in the early 1900's.  Now I, personally, am not clear about whether this was when allergies were discovered, or when they began to exist.  You see, before this industrial age that enabled all of us to fiddle around on our computers and eat microwaved yummies, way more people lived in the country.  And apparently, according to a National Geographic article, chances of a country kid developing allergies are much lower than those of a city kid, because they were exposed to allergens from the beginning.

So maybe that's the problem - maybe all children should be raised on farms and then brought to live and work as adults in the city.  But then wouldn't they be allergic to things like asphalt and exhaust?

Clearly, this is a topic that could use more scientific research - give us a cure, good scientists! I will not be the person to do that, though, because I have to go get a tissue before I snot all over the screen.

YOU Are Such A Babe!

Only 2% of women around the world use the word beautiful to describe themselves.